


birdman

by jessequicksters



Series: we didn't start the fire [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Aberrations, Crack, F/M, Plague, this is absolutely nonsensical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:08:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25981120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Zari wakes up to Nate wearing a plague doctor mask in their room. Aberrations abound.(for the prompt: plague, nate + zari)
Relationships: Nate Heywood/Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi
Series: we didn't start the fire [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885693
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: we didn't start the fire





	birdman

Zari wakes up to the sight of a gigantic bird standing motionless over her in bed, bright eyes looking straight at her in the dark.

She grabs her totem from the bedside table and puts it on, projecting a gust of wind onto the man-sized bird, who doesn’t budge. Why won’t it budge? It stands there, motionless, like it’s made of—

Steel.

“Nate?” Zari asks.

The bird-man takes off their head, revealing something more _man_ underneath.

“Rise and shine, beautiful!” Nate says. Zari’s still frozen in the bed, like she’s a glitch in the middle of a Mortal Kombat game.

“Nate, what the _hell_ are you doing?” she asks, shoving a pillow at his face. They might have just started dating, but she didn’t exactly sign up for uncanny valley visits in the middle of the night—or morning, whatever this is.

Nate laughs, catching the pillow in his hands and hugging it with those beautiful arms of his, which happen to be concealed underneath a long, black gown that falls down to his ankles.

“Are you wearing a pilgrim dress?” Zari asks. A tiny alarm goes off in her mind. “Wait, what time period are we in?”

“What! Come on, Zee, don’t play me like that,” Nate says, bopping her nose with a finger. “We’re in 2020! Time of the great plague. Now, seriously, you need to grab your plague doctor mask and join the rest of us outside—we’ve got aberrations to fix!”

Zari pauses. Nate’s smile fades away slowly.

“Oh, shi—did you just remember something else about 2020 that the rest of us didn’t?”

“Uh-uh,” she says, jumping out of bed to head to the bridge.

“Gideon, tell me about the plague of 2020.”

“Good morning, Miss Tomaz. I certainly will. At the end of 2019, a virus of unknown origin started to spread around the world. . .”

She watches as Gideon replays the footage and displays all the news excerpts. Everyone is dressed up as these birds. Billboards and television commercials are selling bird masks to people; children are wearing them on the street and to school; politicians are wearing them in their press conferences.

“Right, so by the way you’ve gone completely pale at the sight of all of this—and me, this morning—I’m guessing _this_ is the aberration.”

Nate leans over the table towards her, scruffy hair falling all over his face. He’s usually always so particular about his hair. This aberration is even more disturbing than she initially thought.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Zari says, taking the bird mask out of his hands. Even for 2020, these things are still incredibly archaic.

“I really want to put this in the incinerator, but I suppose we need it to fix what's going on out there,” she says, before putting it on herself. It smells like herbs and smoky incense inside. Huh. She actually read about this in the history archives, once upon a time. “This is only going to be a _one-time_ thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> part of yet another quarantine fic challenge with [illea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illea)


End file.
